THE recent Assembly elections were followed by the news that Tony Blair will be standing down as prime minister at the end of next month. There has been so much media coverage of these events that they seemed to have overlooked the fact that, just as importantly, I too have stepped down as chairman of Dyserth Community Council.

Momentous though this event is there has been a distinct lack of press coverage and worldwide reporting of events as they unfolded at Dyserth Pavilion; no live TV crews with their associated lorries and satellite dishes; no banks of microphones in front of a podium bearing the village crest; no mass of clamouring photographers jostling for the best shots of me emerging into the glare of flash photography and the media spotlights.

Not even the Dyserth Times turned up.

Gwyn Y Groesffordd says it’s just the same in Whitford. From his prone position under the front axle of the industrial loader (where he was wrestling with an oily power-steering ram to which I was applying my weight at the far end of a crowbar), he also bemoaned the fact that our community council service goes largely unnoticed by the world’s media.

He said that whereas Mr Blair can look forward to lucrative world tours and public-speaking events, there seems to be a total lack of interest in what we have achieved on the world stage.

And when we step down we end up doing things like getting covered in oil while dismantling power steering pumps.

We continued our discussion over a cup of tea and a couple of custard creams.

Why do we never have the BBC or ITN outside Dyserth Pavilion to cover our meetings and give the latest reports?

You don’t often hear Huw Edwards with his finger to his ear telling us that he believes we can now go live to Guto Harri in Dyserth: “Guto, tell us what are the latest developments at tonight’s meeting of Dyserth Community Council”

“Well, Huw, as I speak I am this very minute getting reports that the council has, as expected, granted planning permission for Mrs Jones, Bryn Celyn, to build a nuclear reactor in her garden shed.

“Now this decision will surely set alarm bells ringing in Washington and Moscow: although Mrs Jones has always categorically stated this plant is for purely domestic nuclear power production to heat her bungalow, on the world stage it will almost certainly be seen as a dangerous piece of sabre rattling by Dyserth.”

“And Russia and the United States, Guto, how will they react, do you think, to tonight’s developments?”

“Well, Huw, my colleagues in Moscow and Washington tell me that this will be seen as a very worrying escalation of affairs and that they will be monitoring the situation very closely indeed.

“I have also just learned that President Bush has in fact issued a statement saying that America will take what he describes as ‘any steps necessary’ to maintain the security of the USA.”

Having got the tractor steering working again, Gwyn said he was glad that Whitford doesn’t have the problems in maintaining world security that we do in Dyserth.

We both agreed that even if we were asked to do a world tour of public speaking engagements we would have to refuse: neither of us have the time.